


all untested

by zombeesknees



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombeesknees/pseuds/zombeesknees
Summary: The Doctor and Rose are getting used to his latest regeneration. Everything seems new again, and half the fun is experimenting… | Written for Challenge 74 at then_theres_us on LJ many moons ago; set immediately after “The Christmas Invasion” and before “New Earth”.





	all untested

It’s been five days since his regeneration. Five days to accustom herself to this old man made new again—not that she’s ever _really_ thought of him as old, definitely not in a negative light; Rose Tyler’s beginning to realize that she’s always had a thing for older men, and somehow 905 doesn’t seem nearly as bad as 45 in a bizarre sort of way.

She misses the old him—more than she’ll ever say—but the Doctor is still the Doctor, even in this new, slimmer body, and she’s still his Rose. She knows she’ll get used to the changes. Probably quite quickly if he continues to look at her out of the corner of his eye like that, eyebrows poised to dance suggestively, balanced on the balls of his feet as if prepared to bounce immediately into action. A bit of her will always miss the daft old face, those ridiculous ears, the brooding eyes and heavy leather jacket. 

But she’s finding she likes the tight pinstripe suit and mad hair. Quite a lot.

“And on today’s agenda?” she asks him, stretching the last of the night’s kinks from her back as she pads up to the console. It’s only a day until New Year’s, two until they can fly off again. She promised Jackie that she’d stick around till the end of the holidays, and while she’s enjoyed the time with her Mum and Sherine and Mickey, and being back in London, she’s also itching to set off again.

Rose wonders if there’s a cure for the wanderlust the Doctor’s given her. If she’ll ever be able to stop now. But she doesn’t wonder for long, because he’s looking at her over the console and her heart is flipping like mad in her chest. 

That’s one bit of her that’ll always be a gymnast around him.

“Unless you’ve some pressing appointments, I thought we’d do a bit more testing,” he suggests lightly, polishing a few buttons as the TARDIS purrs contentedly. She seems to have recovered fully from the spilt tea and regenerative indigestion.

“Alright, what shall we test today?” she asks eagerly, following him in his circuit, shuffling in her pink bunny slippers.

“I thought we’d tackle foods today.”

“Sounds good to me,” she agrees. “Just gimme ten minutes to get dressed, mmkay?”

Part of her (a very big part of her) wishes he’d take the initiative and follow her back to her bedroom. But he doesn’t, and she assumes it’s because he wants to give her more time to get used to this new body of his, seeing that different face every morning. Maybe this new him is still shy around her; maybe he’s still getting used to everything himself. 

She just hopes he won’t make her wait _too_ much longer.

***

The grocery store never knows what hit it. One moment things are relatively peaceful: several mothers are strolling down the aisles with lists in hand, a handful of bachelors and uni students are picking out eggs and bread, and a small boy in aisle nine is throwing a tantrum over chocolate biscuits. Things are mundane, relatively quiet, predictable.

…Until the shopping trolley careens around the deli counter with a shrill squeaking of wobbly wheels, the Doctor struggling in vain to steer.

“Sorry! So sorry!” he cries as he zooms past a shocked housewife. “Rose, Rose, where are the breaks!”

“Trolleys don’t have breaks!” she shouts, jogging after him. “What did you do, grease the wheels?”

“Just a couple of minor modifications, the wheels were practically falling off—pardon me, apologies, mind your feet!”

He finally manages to stop the thing bare inches away from crashing straight into a massive display of cereal boxes, stacked into an impressive pyramid that reaches halfway to the ceiling. He’s panting and running a hand through his hair when Rose stumbles up beside him, similarly out of breath and flushed from both laughter and exertion. 

“You mad thing,” she chastises, poking him relentlessly in the side. “You’ll get us tossed out with that sort of behavior!”

“Certainly livened up the place,” he says defensively, straightening his jacket. “Alright, so it seems I’m definitely the flamboyant type. A little unpredictable—”

“And slightly bonkers,” Rose adds sweetly.

“Yes. Make a note of that. So, what have we here? The Pyramid of Giza recreated with cereal boxes? At 1/1000th scale?”

“I doubt that was their intention, Doctor,” Rose giggles as he takes out his glasses to properly examine the display.

“Cocoa Puffs, Trix, Honey Nut Cheerios,” he reads aloud, forehead furrowed. “You humans and your fascination with animal mascots. Does having a rabbit or cuckoo bird advertising a product really make you more inclined to try it?”

“When you’re a kid you’ll try anything a cartoon endorses,” Rose says from the lofty height of twenty. “I always liked Trix best, myself. It turned your milk rainbow colored.”

“Trix, eh?” the Doctor muses. “Okay, I’ll give it a go. And the rest of these, too.” He tosses a box of each kind into the trolley, awkwardly maneuvers the contraption around, and starts off down the next aisle. “Ooh, fruit snacks! Wonder if they’ve got anything banana flavored?”

***

After the departure (and death, though Rose tried not to think about that too much) of the Sycorax, the Doctor had become almost obsessively bent on finding out more about his newest regeneration.

He hadn’t yet decided if he was a lover or a fighter (he was thinking he could be both), but he was almost certain he wasn’t a traitor (although he knew some high-strung monarchs would disagree) or a liar (unless the situation absolutely called for it, of course). 

The Doctor knew he was right handed, and that he liked Converses over boots, and that he enjoyed the affectation of nerdy specs when being especially thoughtful. He’d decided he hated reality telly within 48 hours of his regeneration, and the thanks for that revelation went firmly to Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Tyler and that talk show host Tricia. 

He’s moving on to more specific issues now, such as: which breakfast cereal is my favorite?

Rose is sitting across from him at the huge kitchen table, a stack of fresh bowls and a line of untested boxes before her. She smiles widely at him, her amusement clear as he tucks into the next bowl.

“Okay, definitely _not_ Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” he says, pulling a face. “Cinnamon’s just straight out. It’s safe to cross _that_ off the list.”

“You know,” Rose says thoughtfully, pouring him a bowl of Chex. “If I was actually, seriously, keeping a list of all of this we’d have filled a whole book by now.”

“Well, there are a _lot_ of things to figure out,” the Doctor points out, dipping his spoon into the next bowl. “Hmmm, Golden Grahams are alright.”

It takes him almost twenty minutes to go through everything, and by the end of it Rose hardly believes he has the room for all of that cereal in such a slim body. The mad, impossible Doctor: he grows back lost hands and can put away twenty boxes of cereal in one sitting.

“I’ve come to a decision,” the Doctor says importantly.

“Yes?”

“I like Lucky Charms the best.”

“That’s good to know, Doctor.”

“…and I think I’m gonna go have a little lie down for a couple hours.”

Rose only giggles.

***

On New Years’ Eve the Doctor finds that he enjoys champagne but that bow ties aren’t really his thing—he’s very glad when Rose pulls it off during their rather energetic midnight kiss. They’re standing in a club as confetti falls around them, and he’s unable to brush all of the glitter and tinsel from their hair, as he discovers later back at the TARDIS.

Rose doesn’t know if it’s the champagne, the celebratory mood of the evening, the red dress she’s wearing, or a combination of all three but tonight the Doctor’s not hesitating at all. There are no coy glances or suggestive grins; only questing hands and lingering tongues. It seems he’s finally ready to test what the new him is like in the bedroom.

She stumbles backwards into the TARDIS, her heels catching on the metal grate, and before she can fall he’s swung her up into his arms, shoes left behind still stuck. She laughs and drapes her arms over his shoulders, kissing him and tempting fate, knowing full well that he’ll be walking practically blind. But right then she doesn’t much care if he drops her, or if they run straight into a wall, because the Doctor is kissing her, and somehow this new body seems even more experienced than the last one and her toes are _actually curling_. 

But they don’t walk into a wall, and he doesn’t trip over his own feet. She has just enough spare thought to wonder if the TARDIS is going easy on them, rearranging the layout just a bit, because it doesn’t seem to take him half as long as it should to reach her room. 

Then he’s tossing her onto the bed with a jovial, playful bounce, and she can’t help but squeal in giddy surprise before he’s on top of her, his elbows digging into the mattress as he presses kisses to her neck. 

Rose curves beneath him, sinuous and catlike, her fingers sliding under his collar and running along the lines of the bone just beneath it. Her thumb brushes against his Adam’s apple, the softest of caresses, and his breath catches in his throat in a growl. She’s quick to undo the buttons of his white shirt, tug sharply at his black jacket ( _“Let’s get you out of this tuxedo, Doctor,” she murmurs, “So you can get to work.”_ ). He slides the silky fabric of her dress up her thighs, his hands warm and sure against the pale skin as they slip beneath the black lace of her panties. 

“These are terribly impractical,” he says breathlessly, glancing down with a wide, toothy smile. “They’ll just have to go.”

“My, my, Mr. Wolf, what big teeth you have,” she giggles.

He hesitates, a fraction of a second, and an indescribable expression flits across his face. Rose catches a glimpse of it; pushes herself up on her elbows. “Is something wrong?” she asks quickly.

He says nothing, only pulls her roughly into another kiss, lips burning and tongues entwining. She loses herself in it, forgets everything she said. And yet, hours later, while she’s brushing her teeth, the word _wolf_ will float across her consciousness and leave her standing there confused, toothpaste at the corners of her mouth. When did that word become so haunting and familiar?

But that has yet to come, and this is now. Now his pants are gone, her dress quickly follows, and it’s funny how often she loses track of time with a Time Lord. He’s slipping inside her, firm and steady and confident, and she grabs hold of his arms to anchor herself. As he moves, slowly and sweetly at first, until the sweat begins to collect between her breasts and she’s gasping, it hits her that—in an impossible way—this is his first time. His body has never filled hers like this before; those hands have never touched the hollow of her back. She’s his first, and how she wishes with the core of her being that she could be his last, his only. 

Her eyes flash open as she comes, the dark brown irises glazed with passion, and his eyes meet them, unwavering but heavy-lidded. In their shared heartbeats, she feels and knows everything: all of his desire and love and devotion for her; the ever-present pain he carries beneath his ribs, the dull ache of being the last and the guilt of it; the wild hopes and crushing agonies and dizzying highs of triumphs; the overwhelming welter of memories and knowledge and emotions that is at the heart of a Time Lord. It is almost too much to bear, and she closes her eyes quickly against it, gasping as her heart thuds audibly in the breathless silence.

He knows why she suddenly quivers beneath him—he knows what she saw and felt. And again he is only amazed by her, by Rose Tyler. How could anyone ever mistake her for ordinary and average, this girl made of stardust and infinite, beautiful power? Had he somehow, subconsciously, recognized the potential that very first night; had he felt what she would become when he’d grabbed her hand in that darkened basement? Perhaps he’d never be certain, but what he knew now was this: Rose Tyler was a part of him. She’d woven herself into the fabric of his being, and nothing would ever cut her from it. Maybe it had been the words she’d scattered, the power of the Time Vortex pouring through her head and into his—that could be the link that would forever bind them.

But no, that couldn’t be it, not entirely. She was Rose, and he was the Doctor, and in this vast and complicated universe miracles _did_ happen. He has to believe that, or else how can he keep traveling? And the day he’d grabbed her hand he’d not just saved a beautiful human girl who would in turn save the universe—he’d saved himself, as well. Rose gave his life new meaning, new purpose, new joy.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs, brushing the damp hair from her cheeks, flecks of glitter on her eyebrows. 

“Course I am,” she says shakily, smiling. 

She saw into the heart and mind of a Time Lord and only smiles. How he loves his Bad Wolf…

“And I think we can mark a couple more things off the list,” she says, slipping her hand into the hair against his neck, tracing tiny swirls with the pads of her fingertips. “You’re _definitely_ a lover.”

He chuckles, a deep and throaty sound that sends a thrill through her, and he kisses her as if he’ll never stop. 

She hopes he never does.


End file.
